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Victoria and Queensland register deaths as Western Australia flags border closure and federal government acts on childcare and industrial relations concerns. Follow live updates
The PM stresses that the “health advice we have is that there is no health reasons why children can’t go to school”.
Asked if taxes will increase to pay for its massive stimulus funding, Morrison does not address this directly.
Obviously there will be a heightened debt burden as a result of decisions we have had to take. They have been necessary decisions. Otherwise the calamity for Australian households economic will be disastrous. We have taken that decisions of government to step up and to make this commitment to provide people with an economic lifeline over the many months ahead. But you are right, we will have to then work hard on the other side to restore the economy. Now, that’s why we are being so careful not to have things that tie the economy and the budget down off into the future. We do need to snap back to the normal arrangements on the other side of this.
Morrison says schools have been planning for a “balance – a combination of distance learning” and, for those who can’t “provide a learning environment at home, for the children to be able to return to school”.
School will return after the holidays. They just won’t be holidays that most school students have known for a long time. And when they go back, it’s the learning that matters, and we hope to have an arrangement that can return as much to normal as possible.
But we have to accept that there will be, for some protracted period of time, this combination of distance learning, and for those who can’t do that at home, no child should be turned away.
The Covid-19 crisis has caused Australians to examine our hospital system with one question in mind: can it handle the coronavirus surge? There has been fierce debate about whether doubling our ventilators from 2,200 to over 4,000 is sufficient.
Australia currently has one ventilator and one Intensive Care Unit (ICU) bed per 11,000 people. We have one doctor for every 285 Australians and one nurse for every 78.
On 22 March Morrison returned to his courtyard with another $66bn. Then on 30 March, Monday, the prime minister came back with $130bn for wage subsidies. Monday’s $130bn will be spent not over the four-year forward estimates, which is the budgetary convention. It will be spent over the next six months.
Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced further restrictions on Sunday, including limiting public gatherings to two people. Follow all the latest Covid-19 updates
Passengers onboard the Ocean Atlantic have begged Scott Morrison to help bring them home via a YouTube video.
The passengers, who include about 150 Australians, embarked on what was supposed to be an Antarctic cruise in February/early March.
Queensland will also be issuing on the spot fines for people who ignore the social distancing rules. As AAP reports:
In Queensland thus far, no more than 10 people - other than residents - will be allowed inside a home at any one time, with homeowners and occupants now obliged to ensure they and visitors practice social distancing as much as possible.
Queensland Police now have powers to issue infringement notices for breaches of quarantine directions of up to $13,345 for individuals and $66,672 for businesses.
In a deeply ingrained reflex, Australians have looked to government in this crisis. Will it prove its worth?
We are all off balance. From the moment I open my eyes in the morning, I feel the discomfiting sensation of being suspended between the set of propositions that existed before the pandemic and the set of propositions that exist now.
I suspect everybody is encountering this out of kilter sensation frequently in normal life. Thousands and thousands of Australians were employed last week but aren’t today. Businesses have gone bust, or teeter on the brink. Kids are not at school. Socialising is curtailed. Unless you are young and sanguine enough to believe coronavirus is either a beat-up or a “boomer remover” and therefore it’s business as usual, you are either ill or deeply anxious about getting ill and infecting others.
It will take a full inquiry to determine what really happened, but clearly Australia’s protocols for assessing disease risk were inadequate
There is nothing more unedifying than different levels of government finger-pointing during a crisis.
In the aftermath of the bushfires, there was sniping via the media as the prime minister’s office blamed the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, for refusing offers of defence help.
From fanning national anxiety with claims of a cyber-attack on MyGov, to a lack of empathy for the jobless, the government services minister has no grasp of the gravity of our times
“It was heartbreaking stuff yesterday Alan.”
“Alan”, naturally, is Alan Jones and our heartbreak town crier is Stuart Robert – the minister charged with rolling out government support to Australians knocked sideways courtesy of the coronavirus pandemic.
New South Wales Catholic schools have asked for the government’s help to take teaching online, warning it could take months to roll out and result in a “digital divide” between schools.
The chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW, Dallas McInerney, wrote to the NSW government on Tuesday seeking help, after the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, announced schools would stay open – although parents are encouraged to keep their children home where they can.
Australians who are laid off as a result of the coronavirus outbreak will be allowed to pull money out of their superannuation, Scott Morrison announced on Sunday.
Withdrawals will be capped at $10,000 this financial year, and a further $10,000 next financial year, and will be tax-free, the prime minister and his treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said.
In one week, Australia intensified its approach to tackling the coronavirus. The government announced travel bans and restrictions on social gatherings, while the reserve bank and government introduced new financial policy in the face of major economic disruptions
More than 170 Australians trapped in locked-down Peru have been advised by the government to find a commercial charter flight to get out of the country.
Some passengers have been able to get on chartered flights to the US, while others have been offered a dedicated charter flight from Lima to Sydney, but at a cost of more than $5,000.
Scott Morrison says massive step-up of the government’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak likely to be in place for at least six months
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has told Australians to “stop hoarding” as he announces sweeping new measures to try to slow the spread of coronavirus, including a ban on indoor gatherings of more than 100 people, a global do-not-travel order, and strict new rules for visiting aged care homes.
In a massive step-up of the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, Morrison announced that a national cabinet of state and federal leaders had agreed on Tuesday night to an indefinite new ban on indoor groups of 100 people or more, with exemptions for schools, public transport, universities, prisons, courts, supermarkets and worksites.
Discredited themes, including that men’s aggression is caused by partners who seek to deny access to their kids, have drawn most of the attention this week
l The only authorised video stream of this week’s federal parliamentary hearings into Australia’s family law system was broadcast on Pauline Hanson’s Facebook page. The camera was operated by Hanson’s aide James Ashby, the stream captioned like an official broadcast but published with hundreds of unfiltered live comments from apparently aggrieved fathers, who called witnesses and MPs “man-hater” and “dirty snake”.
In the shadow of the murders of Hannah Clarke and her three children, expert witnesses have told the inquiry that reform to family law is increasingly urgent to better protect mostly women and children, primarily from men who perpetrate acts of coercive control and domestic violence.
State says virus ‘is no different’ to floods, cyclones and bushfires as it prepares to ramp up pressure at Coag meeting
Queensland will use the upcoming meeting of state leaders and the prime minister to appeal to the federal government to open up its natural disaster assistance payments to local industries impacted by the coronavirus.
Scott Morrison has previously rejected Queensland’s request for the disaster recovery funding arrangements to be made available for businesses knocked by the economic slowdown resulting from Covid-19 on 4 February, and again on 28 February.
Prime minister says ‘ministerial authority’ was with Bridget McKenzie when asked about changes she says she did not make
Scott Morrison has sidestepped a question about whether changes to a spreadsheet of sports grants on 10 and 11 April last year – including a change sought by his own office – were made with proper legal authority.
The former sports minister Bridget McKenzie reignited the sports rorts controversy late last week by insisting she made no changes to the brief and attachments outlining successful projects funded under the sports grants scheme after 4 April 2019.
Political prisoners, including the University of Melbourne academic, have overwhelmingly been excluded from furloughing
Iran has temporarily freed 70,000 prisoners from jails around the country out of fear coronavirus could spread through prisons unchecked, but British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has not been released.